“I haven’t heard anything. I could tell by the way Zach looked at you, by other things he’s done since we’ve been married. By the way he talked about you when he came home. And then you didn’t come to yoga when you always do. . . .” She shook her head. “I should have stayed at the party, but I wasn’t feeling well. I’d eaten something that didn’t agree with me. But now I wish I’d been there. It would have made everything so much easier.” She started to play with the purse strap again. “You can just tell me, okay? We’re friends. We’ve talked about a lot of things. Please, tell me.”

“Zach had a lot to drink that night. He must not have been himself.”

“Just tell me, Madeline.”

Madeline shifted in her seat. If there’d been a way out, a magic portal through the floor or ceiling, she would have taken it.

But things like that existed only in stories. Like the kind Isaac wrote. Not in her actual life, which had suddenly become very, very real.

“I don’t want you to hate me.”

“I won’t.”

Sophia said the words quickly. Madeline tried to believe her. Wanted very much to believe her.

And Madeline refused to lie and make it better.

So she told Sophia what had happened. How she had been talking to Rebecca by the bookshelves, and then she saw Sophia leaving, and she wanted to say good-bye. And Madeline didn’t really mind going outside since the house was getting hot and Hoffman was getting drunker and drunker. After saying good-bye to Sophia, Madeline got waylaid on the patio by Isaac and the stoner guys. Madeline talked to them but refused to smoke since she wanted to stay in command of her faculties. She grabbed a beer and started walking, hoping to be alone for a minute and look at the stars. But as she went through the backyard, someone called her name.

“Madeline.”

She knew who it was without looking, without turning.

And looking back, she wished she’d just kept on going. She could have claimed she hadn’t heard and dashed away, back out to the street where she’d parked her car. Left.

But she hated to be rude, especially to Sophia’s husband. She considered Sophia a friend—a pretty good friend, all things considered—and even if the guy was kind of acting like a creep, maybe she could just talk for a minute and then keep right on going.

But things like that happened fast. She knew. She’d seen it before. With her mom. With other friends. Things happened fast.

She considered herself smart, streetwise even. More so than the spoiled kids she went to school with. She kept her guard up, always watched three hundred and sixty degrees around. She’d learned that from her mother.